


Depth and Intensity

by Alexandria (heartfullofelves)



Series: Torchwood Four [1]
Category: Original Work, Torchwood
Genre: Aetiology, Earthquakes, F/F, New Zealand, Science Fiction, Torchwood Four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 03:50:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4332768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartfullofelves/pseuds/Alexandria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, it would become one of Callie’s special memories to cherish for the rest of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Depth and Intensity

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the purpose of character development and the explanation of the inside joke “we haven’t had a serious threat of alien invasion for a good four years now” between Clea, Red, Urbano, and technically Callie in Lost and Found. 
> 
> Warning: contains original Torchwood Four characters only; no science, only fiction; swearing; and more-than-implied F/F sex.

**_Christchurch, New Zealand  
Very early on 4th September 2010_ **

 

Calandria Blanco Diaz had been asleep for two hours when the call came. Groaning, she reached out for her iPhone 4, fumbling around on the bedside table until she found it. Without looking at the caller ID, she accepted the call.

“What?” she grunted.

“Is that Calandria?” her boss, Andrew Moore, queried. “I could’ve sworn it was a teenage boy who answered her phone.”

Callie sighed. “What is it, Moore?”

“An alien spaceship over Darfield.”

“Oh, shit.” She tossed back the duvet and hurried over to her wardrobe. She put her boss on speakerphone as she threw on track pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a Kathmandu down jacket. “How big is it?”

“Big enough to be unmissable in the daylight. Get your arse here ASAP,” Moore commanded.

Sitting back on the bed, she pulled on a pair of trainers. “Aye aye, captain.”

“Oi! That’s enough of your cheek, missy. Are you coming?” She opened her mouth to reply, but didn’t manage to make a sound before he said, “And _don’t_ make that into an innuendo.”

“I’m on my way,” she promised, grabbing her phone, wallet, and keys.

The small drive from her flat in Papanui to the Torchwood HQ in the City Centre was shortened even further by the complete lack of traffic at one in the morning. She pulled up her battered Subaru Legacy beside Red’s Volkswagen Jetta (which was, fittingly, red) and went inside, taking with her her laptop in its satchel.

The team – or most of the team, since the new guy, Urbano, wasn’t on call at night yet, and Zeb was on honeymoon – was in Moore’s office. Callie entered the room with tired smiles of greeting for her colleagues. “What’s up?” she asked.

“An alien spaceship, apparently,” replied Clea Grey.

“I asked for that, eh?” Callie laughed, and Clea returned a small smile that made Callie’s heart give a tiny flip.

Moore, a tall middle-aged man in a suit, cleared his throat.

“Yes, Mr Boss Man?” Callie battered her eyelashes.

“We don’t have much to go on, except that there’s a spacecraft of extraterrestrial nature hovering near Darfield. We have to deal with it before sunrise, otherwise people will notice it, and I don’t have to remind you of our duty to protect civilians from the existence of aliens.” Moore tapped his desk with a pen. “We’re going out there to remove the ship from the sky, however we have to.”

Griffin Walker brightened. “Can we blow it up?” he asked.

“No we will _not_ blow it up,” sighed Moore. “This is why we don’t hire teenagers,” he muttered. Nineteen-year-old Griffin was Zeb’s younger brother, working “casual” hours while studying agriculture at Lincoln University. He’d only been hired because Moore owed Zeb a favour, and Moore had been regretting the decision ever since.

Red smirked, exchanging a glance with Callie, who rolled her eyes.

“If you’re done, can we get on with the plan?” asked Clea, gritting her teeth.

“It seems that we have to take a midnight fieldtrip to Darfield,” Moore announced. “Except you, Griffin, you’re staying here with the computers.”

“Aw, what? That’s not fair.”

“I’m the boss and I make the rules. You’ll follow our directions from HQ.”

Griffin groaned, but didn’t put up a fuss.

“The rest of us,” Moore gestured towards Callie, Clea, and Red, “are going to sort out this spaceship. I’m hoping that the aliens are peaceful and we don’t have to use force against them, but be prepared for action, just in case. We’ll make a plan once we’ve assessed the situation. Capiche?”

He received three “Yep”s, and told them to get in the car.

Callie followed the others out of the office to wait outside the Torchwood RAV4 for their leader, who was giving Griffin instructions. She elbowed Red out of the way to stand in front of the driver’s door.

“Moore’s not going to like that,” Clea warned, but the streetlights illuminating her face revealed that she was smiling.

“He doesn’t like a lot of stuff I do,” retorted Callie. “Doesn’t stop me from doing it.”

Red sighed. “Did you see what the new guy was wearing today? Italian men do look handsome in suits…”

“Technically he’s from South Africa,” Clea informed him.

His head whipped around. “How’d you know?”

“Um, the accent?” Callie supplied. She looked at Clea and they both smirked. “Someone’s in love,” she sang.

“Oh, like you can talk,” countered Red. “I’ve seen the way you two look at each other.” He pointed at both women.

Clea choked. “What do you mean?” Her eyebrows were raised, lips parted in surprise.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Callie laughed it off.

“No-one ever does,” said Moore, approaching from behind the group, “especially when he’s writing down an analysis by hand. Even if I hadn’t seen you at work, I’d be able to tell from your handwriting that you’re a doctor, Red.”

“Some people have better things to do than write neatly, boss. Like saving the world?” Red pointed out.

“Glad to hear it. Now get out of my way, Callie, I’m driving. Clea, sit in the front and direct me.”

The delightful sound of Clea’s laugh at Callie’s expense was worth the inconvenience of having to sit in the back with not enough leg room.

There was no traffic to lengthen their journey west, and they drove the forty kilometres in forty minutes. Callie avoided looking out the window at the unfamiliar dark landscape and instead lightened the mood by telling blonde jokes – which, Clea stated, were even funnier because Callie herself was blonde – and speaking in innuendo to the other woman – no easy feat when one was in the backseat and her conversational partner was in the front.

They knew when to stop, for there was a glowing disc-like object in the sky that was impossible to miss.

“It’s not subtle, is it?” observed Clea as they opened their doors and braced themselves against the biting cold.

“It’s bloody big, is what it is,” Red enthused.

“It’s a bloody big _problem_ ,” corrected Moore.

“It reminds me of that movie _Chicken Little_ ,” Callie piped up. “Poor Griff’s going to be so mad he didn’t get to see this.”

Moore opened the car boot. “Alright, let’s get a closer look.”

After grabbing their gear from the boot, the team climbed a fence and crossed a paddock to get closer to the spaceship. Callie tried not to think about what she was stepping in in the dark.

When they were directly underneath the ship, though it was about one hundred metres above the ground, they set to work scanning and collecting data. Moore and Clea stood shining torches so that Callie and Red could see. Red joked about carrying a torch for Torchwood, making Callie laugh.

After a while, she announced, “I’m picking up readings of lifeforms,” and shoved her laptop in Moore’s face. “Can’t tell yet whether they’re intelligent-”

“Of course they’re intelligent!” he interrupted. “How else would they be flying a spaceship over Canterbury?”

“Well,” Clea reasoned, “there could be another explanation, like if they’d been kidnapped or something and the ship was on autopilot, so we should get all the data instead of making assumptions.”

“ _Thank_ you.” Callie beamed.

Clea glanced away, but Callie thought she could see the hint of a smile on the other woman’s lips.

After ten more minutes, Red spoke up. “Scans show that there are humanoid lifeforms on board.”

“The ship itself is about forty metres in diameter, probably weighs around two thousand tonnes,” added Callie, “and is made out of similar materials to a NASA space shuttle.” She didn’t go into detail about silica tiles and aluminium, as her audience weren’t physicists and wouldn’t give a shit about thermal protection systems. “It’s a nice work of art.”

Moore whistled, and checked his phone for the time. “Well, it’s almost 3. We’d better act before dawn. I want to see if we can talk with these aliens, and if they’re civil we’ll politely ask them to leave.”

“And plan B, since plan A never works?” asked Clea.

“Plan B: we sink their ship.” He stuffed his free hand under his opposite armpit for warmth. “Okay, we need to open up a line of communication. Give Clea your laptop, Red, and she and Callie can work on doing that. We might need Griffin’s help, too.”

“He’s probably too far away to be much help for hacking the comms system,” Clea pointed out. “Thanks,” she directed at Red when he handed her the laptop in exchange for the torch. She sat down next to Callie and got to work.

Together, the women managed to hack into the ship’s mainframe, a surprisingly primitive system for a vessel that appeared more advanced than any spacecraft made on Earth. Callie was beginning to reconsider her previous awe of its workmanship.

“It’s done,” announced Clea, handing her laptop to Moore. “You can speak into the webcam. The programme will be able to translate, if we’ve encountered the aliens’ language before.”

“That’s not very likely,” Moore muttered as he took the laptop. Callie and the others watched on as he spoke to the aliens via the network. “May I have your attention, please?”

A being that appeared human except for its green colouring, appeared on the screen. “Who are you?” it demanded.

“Good, it speaks English,” whispered Callie.

“We’re Torchwood, and we defend this country from extraterrestrial threats. You are not welcome here.”

The alien snarled. “And where should we go?” When Moore didn’t answer, it continued: “Our planet was destroyed in an act of war; we have nowhere else.”

“And what do you plan to do on Earth?”

“Earth?” repeated the alien with wide eyes. It then turned to another of its kind visible on the edge of the screen and spat out something in an unrecognisable language, the tone suggesting a string of swearwords. “You idiot, I told you to set a course for Venus! Now look what you’ve done, these people are going to think we plan to invade! We agreed to colonise, not start another bloody war!”

Callie put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from giggling. Then she looked at the readings on her own computer screen and gasped.

“And now we don’t have enough fuel to leave the atmosphere!” the alien continued to shout.

“Moore,” hissed Callie. “It’s a trick.”

“What?” he whispered back.

“They’re hostile. They’re draining electricity from the power lines as we speak.”

“You mean they’re fooling us into thinking they’re peaceful?” asked Clea.

“Exactly. And look, they have weapons of mass destruction in the storage bay.”

“They plan to invade,” Red caught on.

The alien was still yelling at its subordinate in colourful language punctuated with occasional foreign curses.

“Damn,” spat Moore. “Quick, cut the connection.”

Clea snatched the laptop from her boss and clicked and typed with furious determination. The light on the webcam went out and the image disappeared. “Done.”

They let out a collective sigh.

“Looks like plan B will have to be put to use after all,” observed Clea with a smile that Callie could only describe as smug.

Moore nodded. “Right. We don’t have the resources to blow it up, and even if we did, we couldn’t cover up an explosion. We also can’t force them to leave – they have lethal weapons.”

“And they don’t have enough fuel,” added Callie. When the others turned to look at her, she pointed to her screen. “They weren’t lying about that, at least. I don’t know what they want with electricity, maybe it will charge their weapons or something, but it won’t give them the energy their ship needs to leave the atmosphere.”

“So what do we do?” asked Red, switching the torch to his other hand and stuffing his now free one into his jean pocket to warm it up.

Moore straightened his shoulders. “We trick them into landing.”

“And how do we do that?” enquired Callie.

“By tricking them,” replied Clea, and Callie gave her a slight push. “Hey!”

“Shh! Okay, here’s the plan: we talk to them again, convince them that we can help, give them something they need. Only we hack into their mechanics so that instead of just landing, they keep going into the ground and get stuck under the surface.”

Red frowned. “But an object that big drilling into the ground…”

“Would create a big shake,” Clea finished with a grin as she understood their leader’s thinking.

Moore pointed at her. “Bingo. Who would think that aliens are the cause of an earthquake?”

“And if geologists found a new fault line, they wouldn’t suspect that it wasn’t natural.” Callie grinned at her boss. “Nice plan, Moore.”

He inclined his head. “Thank you. Now, the tricky part will be taking over their machinery. Think it’s possible?”

Callie glanced at Clea, who nodded, and she followed suit. “We’ll need Griff’s help, but we should be able to do it through their mainframe.”

“Good, get to it. Once you’re in, re-establish the line of communication so I can talk them into landing.”

Clea managed a distracted “Yep” as she picked up her phone and called Griffin, while Callie opened a new programme.

By 4:15, the women had, with help from Griffin, hacked into the ship’s mechanical system.

“We’re in,” Callie announced. “I’ll just bring back the video connection for you.”

Just then, Red gasped in surprise as the torch he’d been holding for so long died. He swore. “Sorry.”

Clea reached over and gave his thigh, since she was sitting and couldn’t reach his shoulder, a pat that was made awkward by the decrease in light. “It’s okay, the one Moore’s holding is enough.”

Callie handed her laptop to Moore and he gave his torch over to Red, who held it over their leader. Moore spoke into the webcam once again. “Apologies for the intrusion and the slight misunderstanding. We would like to offer you whatever resources you may need to continue on your way to Venus.”

“That’s most kind,” replied the alien with a delighted smile made threatening when combined with green skin and sharp teeth. “Do you have a sufficient supply of methane gas to fuel our ship?”

“Of course,” Moore smiled back. “Whatever you need is yours. We only ask that you descend so that we may transport the supplies onto your vessel.”

“We thank you for your generosity, Torchwood. We will land now.”

“Thank you.” Moore’s smile turned cold, and he gestured for Callie to cut off the connection.

“They fell for it,” Red observed. He looked up at the spaceship, which was descending from the sky. “So get out of the way!”

He and Moore helped the women collect their equipment, and the four sprinted back across the paddock and over the fence to the Torchwood vehicle. Callie and Clea threw themselves into the backseat, leaving the men to shut the doors for them as they manipulated the ship’s systems.

“Tilting vessel horizontally and initiating drill mechanism,” stated Callie.

Clea then declared, “Turning on full power.”

It happened in a flash of lights, the ship boring into the earth and the earth responding with a quiver and then a larger tremor which lasted forty seconds. The suspension in the RAV4 saved them from being rocked about too violently, but their proximity to the epicentre still caused a few surprised yelps.

When it was over, Moore called Griffin to tell him to go home, then threw open his door and went to the boot. The others followed him, and he grabbed a handful of spades, distributing them so they each had one.

Red frowned at his. “What’s this for?”

“We have a forty-metre-long trench to cover up,” Moore explained. “Get cracking.”

Putting the soil back into place while the sun’s fingers crept over the horizon was the most gruelling and time-consuming of their tasks. Four sweaty and flushed figures trudged back to the car, Moore clutching at his back, the others rolling their shoulders and stretching their necks, all of them groaning.

Moore tossed the keys to Red. “Now that’s done, you can drive us home.”

The mood on the drive back to Christchurch was subdued, and Callie snuck in a little nap, using her puffer jacket as a pillow. She woke when Red pulled into the Torchwood carpark and stopped the engine.

“You can go home and take the day off unless there’s an emergency. You look shattered,” Moore told his agents.

“Aw, stop with the compliments, you’re making me blush,” replied Callie.

“I mean it,” he said. “Go home and get some sleep.”

The sun was well and truly up by now, but the team was good at sleeping whenever they had the opportunity, no matter the level of darkness, quietness, or horizontalness of them or their surroundings.

Red seized the opportunity. “Well, if you insist,” he yawned. “Later, guys.” He wandered over to his Jetta, leaving the others standing in the middle of the carpark.

Moore was the next to leave, saying, “Goodbye girls,” before heading over to his own car.

Clea turned to Callie with wide blue eyes. “I can’t believe we buried a shipload of aliens alive,” she gasped.

Callie rubbed Clea’s shoulders. “Don’t think about it,” she advised, maintaining the physical contact. “It wasn’t humane, but we had to eliminate the threat.”

Despite Clea’s nod, Callie could tell that the other woman wasn’t about to stop analysing it. “We didn’t have a choice, Clea. Just don’t think about it; let it go.”

Clea tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear and took in a deep breath. “Could you help me forget about it?” she asked.

Callie stared, heart leaping inside her chest. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“If you mean, am I asking you to take me home and fuck me, the answer’s yes.”

Callie moved her hands from Clea’s shoulders down to Clea’s hips. “Are you sure? I know you’ve never been with a woman before.”

Clea scowled. “Would I ask if I weren’t sure?”

“Good point.” Callie grinned, and bent her head to kiss Clea’s mouth.

The other woman’s rose-coloured lips were soft and warm, surprising given their recent escapade in the cold and dry early spring morning. Callie pulled away after a minute and, noticing the blissed out expression on Clea’s face, couldn’t help making the first of many earthquake jokes to come. “So, did the earth move for you too?”

Clea responded with a playful slap on the arm. “Less chitchat, more fucking.”

“Ooh, bossy,” laughed Callie.

“Guess that’s why I’m Moore’s second-in-command.” Clea pulled Callie’s head down to hers for a deeper, more intense kiss.

It wasn’t every day that a beautiful woman propositioned you after helping you cause an earthquake. Later, it would become one of Callie’s special memories to cherish for the rest of her life. But right now, she had a lady to please.


End file.
